Daisy Laing NEWS

Tock Tick

TockTick. The clock is ticking till Mark Nicholls returns to Daisy Laing gallery, chapel street. Following on from last years well received fake plastic flowers, Nicholls latest show “tock tick” runs till March.
A sneak advance peak suggests Nicholls is exploring his ideas with a renewed confidence, vigour and playfulness. His inspirations are all there but Nichols work is truly his own, and he references and re-invents his influences much as a musician might sample or a writer might quote.
It promises to be an entertaining clash of high and popular culture, with still lives and portraiture rendered with an absurdist, almost cartoon-like, energy. It looks like his popes  will be making a reappearance but he’s taken them in a new direction, while a still life that appears to be, at first glance,  a bunch of grapes, isn’t! Nicholls Cornish home also makes a rare appearance but a view of The Lizard at sunset Isn’t quite what you expect.  It is of course classic Nicholls.
And the title? With his recurring clock motif there’s always a suggestion of manic urgency to Nichols work, a sense of time running out. Or is it that he has lit the fuse on a visual timebomb, primed for an explosion of ideas, references and colours. Tock tick. The countdown has begun.